VIDEO `WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS'.

Byline: Rob Lowman Entertainment Editor

Before you sit down to watch a romantic movie with your significant other on Valentine's Day, you should probably consider the message you're sending.

After all, the cinema has done much to skew our idea of love. Even movie characters like Meg Ryan's Annie in ``Sleepless in Seattle'' admit it.

``Now that was when people knew how to be in love,'' Annie cries as she watches ``An Affair to Remember.'' ``They knew it! Time, distance ... nothing could separate them because they knew. It was right. It was real. It was ...''

``A movie,'' chimes in her friend, Becky (Rosie O'Donnell). ``That's your problem! You don't want to be in love. You want to be in love in a movie.''

What Annie wants is destiny, which is what both ``Sleepless in Seattle'' and ``An Affair to Remember'' rely on. There have been many stories in which fate is involved, including ``Romeo and Juliet,'' perhaps the greatest. It has been filmed numerous times in various forms. There are Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard in a 1936 version. From stage and the streets of Manhattan came Robert Wise's 1961 ``West Side Story.'' And then there is Baz Luhrmann's 1996 stylish punk ``William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet.'' For many, Franco Zeffirelli's sentimentalized 1968 production remains a favorite.

Just remember, though, that as profound as the Bard's work is, the ``star-crossed lovers die'' in the end.

Another popular romantic formula is opposites attracting, after, of course, amusing battles. Probably the first great film of this genre was Frank Capra's 1934 comedy ``It Happened One Night,'' starring Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable. In it, Gable plays a down-to-earth newspaper reporter (aren't we all) who, in order to get a story and get back into the good graces of his editor, baby-sits a spoiled heiress running away from a marriage she is being forced into to. Friction eventually fans sparks of love, as it does in other, much later films, like ``When Harry Met Sally ...'' (1989), ``You've Got Mail'' (1998) and countless more.

But there is another type of romantic film that reminds me what one of my college professors, John Barth, wrote about love in his National Book Award-winning ``Chimera.'' If I may paraphrase, he said that we all know things will end, but we should live like they will last forever.

And there are a few films that demonstrate that type of commitment, especially in what many consider the greatest romantic film of all time.

``We'll always have Paris. We didn't have, we lost it, until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night,'' Rick (Humphrey Bogart) tells Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) in ``Casablanca'' (1942).

``And I said I would never leave you ...'' replies Ilsa.

``And you never will. But I've got a job to do, too.''

As long as Rick was the ``I stick my neck out for no one'' saloonkeeper, he had a good heart but no passion, and commitment takes passion.

At the end, when Rick does the right thing and sends Ilsa off with her husband while he heads off to fight the war, moviegoers realize what these two lovers know: They will never be together. But Paris lasts forever.

In Michael Mann's ``The Last of the Mohicans'' (1992), the frontiersman Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis) and the young daughter of a British colonel, Cora (Madeleine Stowe), are trapped in a cave beneath a waterfall as a hostile Indian tribe closes in on them. Knowing there is no way out and that she will be safer without him because the Indians want her as a hostage, he must escape.

As the music swells, water pours down, and emotions are evident on the stoic Hawkeye's face as he shouts, ``Stay alive, no matter what occurs! I will find you. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far, I will find you.''

It is a declaration of their eternal love.

Water and love go together in Cameron Crowe's ``Say Anything'' (1989), which comes out on a special-edition DVD in March. Though this is nominally a teen movie, its hero, Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack), professes his love for the brains-and-beauty Diane (Ione Skye) by standing in a downpour outside her window, holding up a portable tapedeck playing Peter Gabriel's gorgeously intense ``In Your Eyes.''

If the recent high-school grad Lloyd hasn't been able to find a direction to go before, he does when he finds Diane.

``What I really want to do with my life - what I want to do for a living,'' he tells Diane's disapproving father (John Mahoney), ``is I want to be with your daughter. I'm good at it.''

Crowe also had a grown-up version of this scene in his 1996 film ``Jerry Maguire,'' the story of a sports agent (Tom Cruise) who finds his soul.

At the end, the contrite Maguire returns to tell faithful Dorothy, the woman who believed in him when nobody else had, how mistaken and sorry he was. He rambles on with his apology, ending with ``I love you. You ... complete me.''

``Shut up. Just shut up. You had me at 'hello,' '' she tells him, confirming her commitment.

A lot of people joked over the line, but not because it wasn't romantic.

It also echoed the line ``Love is never having to say you're sorry,'' but that's from ``Love Story'' (1970), a sappy film if there ever was one. And remember, ladies, she dies in the end.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2) Daniel Day-Lewis cuts a fine romantic figure in the 1992 version of the adventure classic ``The Last of the Mohicans.''

(3) For some, ``Casablanca's'' Rick and Ilsa (Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman) were the definitive star-crossed lovers.

(4) Modern teen romance turned mature when John Cusack poured out his heart to Ione Skye in 1989's ``Say Anything.''